How to Build a Backyard Hockey Rink

This guide explains how to build a rink from scratch, if you are looking for a backyard kit that can be re-used you could consider picking one up on this page you can use our coupon code  HOWHCKY001   for $10 off. If you are looking to build your own, this guide should be all you need, any specialty products you may need (or want) are linked to in the article.

Article written by Jeremy at How To Hockey!  

Building your own backyard hockey rink

As any hockey player knows, having an open sheet of clean ice is a rare and beautiful thing. I can remember back in high school, our team practiced right after school ended each day. As seniors, we’d set up our class schedule to have the last period free, meaning we could get to the rink with a full hour to go before practice officially started. To be the first one on that perfect afternoon ice was to have heaven all to yourself — to breathe in that beautiful rink smell, to feel the cold air sweep by your face, to be the first to carve ice with steel. In those solitary minutes, everything was right in the world. Before long, the ice was crowded with teammates and coaches, the structure of another practice in full swing, the perfect open ice gone for another day.



I didn’t build my first rink until I was 28. I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, and I was a bit nervous, but when the boards were up and the liner was in and the water truck was parked in front of my house, I knew it would be incredible. And it was. A few days after we filled, the ice hard and my two-year-old son asleep, I turned on the floodlights and snuck out back, Bauers slung over Sher-Wood. I tied the cold laces and stood up. For the first time in a decade I felt the rush of clean, smooth, untarnished ice, the same feeling that had me sprinting for my car each afternoon as a teenager. The ice was mine and mine alone, just as it was then.

Building and maintaining a backyard rink is hard work, and nobody who has done it will tell you otherwise. But I’ll stop short of saying it’s difficult — and there is a difference. Chopping firewood and shoveling snow is hard work. Calculus and brain surgery are difficult. That’s to say that with proper planning and good instruction, everyone reading this can build a rink in their backyard. You just need to do a bit of homework first.

For all intents and purposes, a backyard rink is nothing more than an above-ground swimming pool, albeit one with only a few inches of water. When it comes to how to build it and what to use, there are literally thousands of variations, each rink as different as the person who builds it. But each one shares three common (and mandatory) components: boards, bracing, and a liner. Some folks in very cold climates will pack down snow and flood it, using snowbanks as boards. I don’t live in a climate that supports that, so I won’t be talking about that here. But what I will give you below is a rough idea of how most people I know build their rinks – me and my customers included.

For more information and video's please click here!!